The New Flesh

Until now, I didn’t know how good I was with massages. I was half an hour into it, scrubbing the pads of my fingers around my boyfriend’s ribs and spine, squeezing his shoulder muscles, and rubbing up the sides of his neck with my hands about to give out. Then as I worked back down his ribs and spine he dragged on a moan and passed-out beneath me with a smile.

When his head snapped to the other side, I didn’t expect his bones to crumble in my fingers. The eagle tattooed on his back then rolled its eyes and let its tongue limp to one side of its beak. I didn’t know what to do, so I scratched the eagle behind its ear and felt jiggling fragments of spine as I continued to work the other hand around the jellied meat of his left lower back. At this point I noticed his fingers curling into his palms and blanching the skin before finally drawing blood. I didn’t think the worst of it until I worked my way back up. The back of his neck unzipped to the top of his head and his skull started to split, at which point I dismounted and grabbed for the phone.

He snapped his head back before I could dial any numbers and his neck sewed itself shut while bone and flesh took the time to return to form. Facing me with a lazy frown, he asked, “Why did you stop?"

"Crumble"

Copyright: © 2010 Edmund Colell

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